More on the CAID exchange

This is a fairly typical presentation of an internet Darwinist complete with shifting positions and unsubstantiated claims. As continued from the last post:


As I said useless garbage. Cells cleave and degrade non-functional proteins.

There’s no “cell” involved here. This is a simple self-replicating polyeptide. The process of replicating itself does not produce “useless garbage” - it produces more copies of this protein.

Bradford: Which are useless to any life creating process. You can take all the proteins an organism requires place them in an aqueous solution and you have nothing more than wet proteins. Life requires more than peptides. You don't get nucleotides from replicating peptides.

What selective advantage produces a cell from a peptide with 32 residues?

Who said anything about cells? This is really primitive life here. If you think really primitive life resembled anything as complex as a “cell”, it’s up to you to explain why.

Bradford: There is no such thing as really primitive life except in your imagination. It is not an experimental result but rather something you believe in based on faith.

As I’ve said repeatedly - and this will be the third time - selection operates on the reproduction of such a protein.

Bradford: Real researchers can specify what they mean by a selctive advantage when referencing a protein or gene. Apparently you can do nothing other than assert that selection operates.

For the third time - in this very post, no less - there is no “cell” here.

Bradford: Now you're getting it. There is no evidence that cells arise other than in the imaginations of Darwinists.

Please try to deal with the things I actually post, rather than whatever it is your fevered imagination thinks I’ve posted.

Bradford: You post nothing but unsubstantiated claims trying to link a peptide to another peptide. This is a theoretical stuttering problem not anything of scientific value.

I realize it’s much easier for you to invent things for me to present, so that you might knock your own softballs out of the park with some sort of canned refutation, but it really does betray just how little you are interested in an actual, honest exploration of these questions.

Bradford: I'm interested in honest scientific evidence not stories about vague peptide pathways.

It affects the issue of life’s origins. ID encompasses the whole of natural history.

Great - biogenesis, “a-” or otherwise, is your problem then. You figure it out. As I’ve said, the theory of evolution is not dependent on any particular biogenetic scenario - if your theory is, better get crackin’.

Bradford: Then students need to be taught that there is no scientific mechanism showing how life originated and that Darwinism is based on an unsupported assumption about the sufficiency of naturalism.

What constitutes a “bad copy” in an extra-cellular environment?


You’re kidding, right? A copy that’s not identical to the original and is not capable of self-replication as a result is a “bad” copy. A copy that is identical to the original and is hence also capable of self-replication is a “good” copy. A copy that is not identical to the original but is still capable of self-replication is a “good enough” copy.

Bradford: You never did address the issue of where a steady supply of 20 L amino acid isomers come from.

Bradford: What research paper indicates that “good copies” of a 32 residue peptide lead to functional cellular proteins?

Burn, strawman, burn! These are one-offs, William - you’re talking about what are likely singular events in the history of the world.

Bradford: I'm talking about experimental evidence to back up your replicating peptide claims. Replicating peptides do not produce nucleic acids; an essential biochemical. It's a matter of simple biochemistry having nothing to do with singular events.

ID claims such things are impossible. For ID to be refuted, then, all one must do is show that it’s possible, no matter how unlikely. Enjoy your stay in what is exceedingly likely to be a continuously shrinking box.

Bradford: The more we learn about the details of cellular functions the more obvious it becomes that cells do not arise from prebiotic soups. But you are entitled to your unscientific beliefs that they do.

A replicating peptide in a precellular environment is an abiogenesis scenario. I thought you knew the difference between evolution and abiogenesis.


Uh, no, it’s not an abiogenetic scenario. If I asserted that this peptide were the first such thing, with no self-replicating precursors, and I set out to tell you where, how, and when such a thing came about, sui generis as it were, that would be an abiogenetic scenario. Since I’ve said none of those things, this is not a theory of abiogenesis - it is merely an examination of a simple self-replicating polypeptide.

Bradford: It's nothing more than an indication that peptides can replicate under specified conditions as long as an adaquate supply of amino acids exists. Taking it any further than that is a gigantic leap of faith.